


Doomed To Repeat

by sasha_b



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-25
Updated: 2011-09-25
Packaged: 2017-10-24 00:44:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasha_b/pseuds/sasha_b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven visits Charles.  Post movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doomed To Repeat

The plan is so simple.

It’s so simple really she doesn’t even say a word to Erik, although Emma gives her that glacial, blue eyed stare that still creeps Raven out. She walks past the other woman, body morphing when she reaches her room and the waiting Azazel.

She has to give him credit for not trying to argue her out of this.

They reach the mansion (her home for so long) late at night, its hulk imposing and cold, the trees waving, almost a _we’ve missed you_ in the pre-winter wind and she brushes past the Russian and he’s gone in a blink; they’ve agreed for him to come back in the dawn hours.

Raven enters the mansion – school now – and stops to adjust her cardigan. She’s not worried about it; she’s lived with Charles for more than half her life, knows his mannerisms, knows his motions and speech patterns and still she clears her throat and murmurs _you’re welcome to my home_ in order to check the cadence of his highbrow accent.

Passing the large hall mirror she runs fingers through her hair, smiles with those large red lips, and shoves the borrowed hands into her pockets as they tremble just slightly. The clock – a giant grandfather; she remembers being afraid of its girth as a girl – clangs next to her head, and she walks on, looking for lights, trying to find any source of voices or noise or –

“Hank.”

She smiles (a bit too broadly, but there it is) and claps the young man (Beast) on his shoulder. “A good evening to you. Why are you up so late?”

The growl that erupts from his blue lips surprises her, and in an instant she’s shoved against the kitchen wall, squirming, sputtering in Charles’ best insulted brogue _what’s wrong with you, Hank? Put me down!_ and trying with her newly (Erik is a good teacher) developed strength to keep her disguise in check. A tea towel collapses from the rack on the wall next to her head, falling over her shoulder as Hank leans closer, hot breath and even hotter fur in her face, as the grandfather clock ticks in the background.

“Are you spying for him now?”

He spits the words, and Raven-as-Charles jerks away from him. She blinks the impossibly blue eyes, widening them, not sure what in the hell is wrong with Hank, but she’s not going to blow this. Her head aches from where he’s slammed her against the wall, but she resists rubbing it. Charles would ignore that.

“What on earth are on you on about? Put me down, Hank.”

The words are louder than Charles might say them, and if there’s a tinge of something sharper than Charles would admit to, Raven ignores that too. Hank’s hand loosens its grip and she’s on the tips of her toes now, the fancy shoes brushing the floor, scraping the polish. Odd, the little details.

“Are you. Spying. For him now.”

He bites the words off, anger filling his eyes, forming the shape of his mouth, forcing his lips back off his fangs. Raven shakes her head, Charles’s floppy hair hanging in her eyes. “Spying for _whom_ , my dear boy?”

Hank doesn’t answer; his left hand, trembling with the force of his (unfounded?) rage, points at a framed photograph on the wall. It’s Alex, Sean and Charles in front of a baseball stadium, the two boys standing next to Charles, his face lit with his lovely smile (the one she misses so much), his hands resting on the armrests of the chair he sits in.

Her eyes narrow, and she leans in.

The chair. He sits in. The _wheel_ chair.

“What happened?”

She turns yellow eyes on Hank, her own hand rising to rip his away from her (suddenly, no control) blue throat. “What happened, Hank?”

Hank’s gaze is on her, focused only on her face and her body, mutant and proud, the soft _fwip_ of the scales that shift her back the sound of pages turning, her life passing, Charles’ life passing before her, through her. “What _happened?_ ”

He tells her all of it; she’d known the cause, but hadn’t in her innocent mind wanted to believe they hadn’t been able to help him. Wanted to believe that her leaving him there with Moira hadn’t resulted in something tragic, something he hadn’t deserved, something that’s caused a broken little piece of her heart to start banging, then slowing, then banging. It hurts.

 _what if we had made Azazel take him_

She blinks her gold eyes, the lids heavy and fleshy, everything on her aching and tired and she shoves Hank away as he stops speaking. The clock ticks, once, twice, and she allows a snarl to cross her features. She’d _hated_ that thing when she lived here.

When she lived here. When she and Charles lived here, and she’d lived a life that was half hidden in shadow, no matter the love her brother – her false brother, so kind and loving even yet – had held for her.

She settles her hands on the kitchen counter, blue scales fluttering briefly, Caucasian skin to blue and back and forth.

“Why are you here?”

She turns to face Hank, the moon in the window bright, allowing every detail of his animal’s face to show. He’s beautiful, still. No matter her feelings or no matter his self-hatred, which is so evident, hurt and pain and anguish behind the tiny, ridiculous glasses.

“I don’t know,” she whispers, the words floating away, out the window, into the night air of Westchester, that place she misses and yet loathes. She stands with her hands on her hips and cocks her head. “Where is he?”

“I’m here, Raven.”

She doesn’t want to turn but she does, and somehow Hank’s melted away and it’s just she and Charles in that kitchen where they’d first found each other _You’ll never be hungry again_ and she does not allow herself the luxury of human feelings but her lips tremble and her eyes burn and she squats so she’s level with Charles’ face.

He touches her hand and she curls her fingers through his, after only a moment’s hesitation.

*

She’s lying on the bed in the house they’ve commandeered this week when Erik comes into her room. She’s not surprised.

He’s not wearing the helmet; it’s very late at night, the city lights masking the stars (so unlike the country where she used to live) and he sits on the bed, face composed, calm, long fingers touching her thigh, once.

“I’m not sorry I went, Erik, so don’t bother with any admonishments,” she tells him, matter of fact and with her eyes closed. She does not want to meet his gaze, because even after all she’s seen, all the words from Charles, she still is enamored of Erik and if she looks…

“I’m not going to admonish you.”

His voice slides over her like warm honey as it always does. As it always has, since he called her _perfection_. She knows now he was lying, making her believe him, taking her ideals and her virtue and her desperate _want_ for his cause, but she doesn’t care. He is right, she knows, but right now she’s too tired and too overwhelmed to examine that mystery.

“Then what do you want?”

When he doesn’t answer, she opens her eyes and sits up, her red hair sliding over her shoulder (it’s grown, she likes the length), brushing the top of her right breast.

Lights twinkle through her half closed window; traffic can be heard from far off, humidity and a breeze reach through the curtains and flutters the robe (she hasn’t changed, not all that much) that hangs on the back of her chair.

Erik lifts his left hand and runs it through the strands of hair that rest on her shoulder. He looks at her, his large expressive eyes –

“How is he?”

She opens her mouth, shuts it. After a moment, says

“He’s managing.”

Erik nods, hesitates, but then stands. “Good.”

He pulls her door open; the others are either asleep or watching the neighborhood or looking for other mutants to recruit. The hallway is silent and empty. “Erik,” she starts.

“Good,” he repeats, louder, final. He braces a hand on the doorjamb, and she slides to the edge of her bed, about to rise, but he’s gone and she’s watching him walk away, down the hall, her lip caught between her teeth as his body, stiff and straight as always, gets smaller as he gets further and further away from her.

She knows better than to follow.

Crossing her legs as she sits on the bed, she steeples her fingers and rests the points of them under her chin and she closes her eyes as she thinks about Charles and what he’d told her and what he’d asked, no, pleaded, for her to do.

She wonders when she’ll be able to say no to Charles.

 _Take care of him for me_ he’d asked.

Impossible, she’d answered. Charles had merely smiled, wan and ghostlike and – the pain she saw behind that expression, too deep –

“I know.”

She’d left him then, had found Azazel, had come to this home.

She lies down and watches the ceiling and thinks about nothing. Or would, except that would be a feat even greater than doing what Charles had asked of her.


End file.
